How was the use of violence against Muslims explained and justified in medieval Islam? What role did state punishment play in delineating the private from the public sphere? What strategies were deployed to cope with the suffering caused by punishment? These questions are explored in Christian Lange's in-depth study of the phenomenon of punishment, both divine and human, in eleventh-to-thirteenth-century Islamic society. The book examines the relationship between state and society in meting out justice, Muslim attitudes to hell and the punishments that were in store in the afterlife, and the legal dimensions of punishment. The cross-disciplinary approach embraced in this study, which is based on a wide variety of Persian and Arabic sources, sheds light on the interplay between theory and practice in Islamic criminal law, and between executive power and the religious imagination of medieval Muslim society at large.
Author(s): Christian Lange
Series: Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization
Edition: 1
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 304
Cover......Page 1
Half-title......Page 3
Series-title......Page 4
Title......Page 5
Copyright......Page 6
Contents......Page 7
Acknowledgments......Page 8
Abbreviations......Page 10
Introduction......Page 11
The historical context......Page 14
General conditions of punishment under the Saljuqs......Page 17
Part I: the politics of punishment......Page 21
Part II: the eschatology of punishment......Page 25
Part III: legal dimensions of punishment......Page 28
Part 1 The politics of punishment......Page 33
Private punishments......Page 35
The cultural logic of private punishment......Page 38
Punishments carried out before the ruler’s tribunal......Page 42
Banner and throne symbolism in the courtly tribunal......Page 44
Public punishments......Page 47
Institutions of justice and the question of mazalim under the Saljuqs......Page 49
The ideology of siyasa......Page 52
Punishment by the judge......Page 54
The police (shihna, shurta)......Page 58
The shihna-policeman......Page 61
Punishment by the market-inspector (muhtasib)......Page 64
Execution by the sword......Page 71
Gibbeting (salb/bar dar kardan)......Page 72
Other forms of capital punishment......Page 76
Maimed bodies, maimed faces......Page 82
Torture (tadhib/shikanja)......Page 83
Flogging and flogging instruments......Page 87
Shaming (tashhir)......Page 89
Elements of the tashhïr punishment......Page 95
Imprisonment......Page 99
Banishment and exile......Page 104
Part II The eschatology of punishment......Page 109
Sins and the uncertainty of salvation......Page 111
Lists of grave sins in the hadith tradition......Page 114
Popular expressions of the uncertainty of salvation......Page 115
Fear in Muslim eschatology......Page 121
The Muslim hell in Western scholarship......Page 125
Theological preliminary: hell’s coexistence......Page 127
Hell’s shape and location......Page 128
Inside hell......Page 132
Hell’s size, smells, colors, and meteorological properties......Page 136
Geographical characteristics of hell......Page 137
Hell’s flora......Page 140
The architecture of hell......Page 141
Hell as prison......Page 143
Hell as a place of exile......Page 147
Hell’s angels......Page 149
Animals in hell......Page 151
Types of punishment in hell......Page 154
Structuralist functions of the imaginaire of hell......Page 160
Didactic dimensions of the Muslim hell......Page 161
Common people in hell......Page 162
Men of religion in hell......Page 165
Rulers and their representatives in hell......Page 167
Publicness and shame in hell......Page 171
Defacing and other marks of sinners in hell......Page 173
Performative dimensions of the Muslim imaginaire of hell......Page 178
Ritual aspects of tashhimacrr......Page 182
Part III Legal dimensions of punishment......Page 187
Analogy and punishment in Western and Islamic law......Page 189
The Hanafi rejection of analogical reasoning (qiyas) in the divinely ordained punishments......Page 193
Theological premises......Page 196
Epistemological aspects......Page 200
Terminological differences between Hanafite and Shafiite qiyas......Page 204
Sodomy (liwat) vs. fornication (zina) in Hanafi substantive law (furu)......Page 209
Arguments from Prophetic tradition (hadith)......Page 212
Lexicographical arguments......Page 215
Semantic arguments......Page 217
Sodomy, privacy, and morality......Page 222
Discretionary punishment (tazir) and sodomy......Page 225
Discretionary punishment and public sins......Page 228
False testimony (shahadat al-zur) and shaming in Islamic law......Page 233
Ritual parading on animals......Page 236
Blackening of the face (taswid al-wajh)......Page 238
Stripping of clothes (tajrid al-thiyab) and special signs......Page 242
Beating (darb) and announcing the crime (tarif/tasmi)......Page 245
Tashhir as talionic punishment......Page 247
False testimony as a crime against the private sphere and against God......Page 249
Conclusion......Page 254
Bibliography......Page 259
Index of names......Page 290
Index of subjects......Page 295
Other titles in the series......Page 301
